


Kryptonite

by forensicleaf



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crack-ish, Fluff, Gen, Irondad, Peter got a few more things from the spider, peppermint is out, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25016788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forensicleaf/pseuds/forensicleaf
Summary: The kid is acting weird.Tony tries to figure it out.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 71
Kudos: 565





	Kryptonite

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy this silliness. Thank you to [frostysunflowers](%E2%80%9D) for reading over!

The kid is acting weird. 

Tony starts noticing it as soon as they arrive at the lake house. Usually, Peter would be bounding straight upstairs to drop his stuff off the moment they step inside; today, he just stands awkwardly in the hall, looking around with a slightly puzzled expression. 

It’s odd.

The place has become like a second home to Peter over the past six months, as Tony had always wished it could have been in those dark few years, Peter coming upstate every couple of weeks to spend the weekend away from the city and from spider responsibilities. He knows the kid feels comfortable here, knows from their conversation in the car on the way up that he’d been looking forward to this, which is why the reaction—not to mention the slight tension that has appeared across Peter’s shoulders—strikes him as bizarre.

“Uh, Pete? Everything all right.”

“Hmm?” Peter blinks at him, shaking himself out of whatever daze he’d been in. “What? Oh. Yeah, I’m good.” He smiles, genuine, and Tony feels the little ball of worry in his chest unfurl.

“Okay. You maybe want to...take your bag upstairs?”

“Oh. Sure,” Peter says, like it hadn’t even occurred to him. He hikes his bag onto his shoulder and up he goes. Tony watches him, that little ball of worry coming straight back when he notices the way Peter halts at the top of the stairs, the way he skirts past the open door of the master bedroom after that, clinging close to the wall on the other side of the hallway. 

_Weird,_ Tony thinks. But that turns out to only be the beginning.

Peter skirts around a lot that day—skimming walls as he treads through the house and pausing in doorways a moment before hesitantly stepping through, looking spooked. If Tony didn’t know any better he’d get it into his head that Peter was feeling uncomfortable being here, like he doesn’t belong, perhaps. But he does know better, and that isn’t right—the kid’s told him loads of times that he loves it here, that he loves Morgan, and the lake, and the fully kitted-out lab in the garage. Whatever fears Tony had had about Peter worrying about his place in his life had been assuaged on that first visit all those months ago, when he’d found Peter and Morgan crammed into her den, having a tea party with a vast array of plushie attendees. 

That’s not what it is, Tony’s confident. But still, something is going on. 

The weirdness seems to subside once they head out to the garage, Peter coming back to himself as they pull a few updates through for Karen and tweak a couple of patches of circuitry where the fabric of his suit has been damaged. Tony thinks that maybe Peter was just having an odd morning because he seems perfectly fine then, traversing the lab like he belongs there, which he does. Tony chalks it up to teenage strangeness and for a few hours, he forgets all about it, getting lost in the familiarity of messing around with wires and screws with the kid.

He’s quick to remember when they pack up for the afternoon and head back in to make pizza and stick on the evening’s chosen movie. Jurassic Park, of course—Peter’s choice.

“Okay, that’s it,” Tony says as they re-enter the house and Peter immediately goes back to the awkward hesitance that Tony thought they’d dispersed of in the hours spent in the lab. Rather than following Tony on the direct path through the kitchen, the kid skirts round the large island, keeping his distance and extending his route two times over, and Tony can’t hold his tongue about it all any longer. “What is this? What’s going on?”

Peter blinks. “What?”

“ _This,_ ” Tony says, waving a hand in Peter’s direction. “ _You,_ walking round my house like you’re expecting someone to jump you. Like you’re trying to...I don’t know, get your steps in, or whatever.”

Peter frowns. He looks around, like he’s just realising he’s walked the entire way round the kitchen island instead of just cutting across the one side, as Tony had. “Huh,” he says. “I guess I just didn’t want to go that way.”

“You didn’t want to go this way.”

Peter shrugs. 

“Kid this is weird, even for you. You’ve been doing this all day. You walked through the living room earlier like you were the snake in Snake.”

“What’s Snake?” Peter asks with no hint of teasing.

Tony stares. “I...never mind. Something’s going on with you. Tell me. Do you not want to be here?” 

Peter’s brow creases. “What? No. Of course I want to be here.”

“Then what?”

Peter hesitates. Not because he doesn’t want to tell him, Tony realises, but because he’s trying to figure it out himself. “Okay,” he says after a moment. “Well, it’s not a big deal, and it’s probably actually nothing at all, but...I’ve kind of been getting this feeling in here today. Something is different somehow. I can’t figure out what, it just feels funny.”

“Funny. What, like…Peter Tingle funny?”

Peter’s face drops into a scowl. Tony ignores it. 

“Genuine question. Is there a bomb buried under my floorboards, or something? ‘cause I’d really like to deal with that before Pepper gets back if there is. She hates it when people try to blow me up.”

“That’s not funny.”

Tony just shrugs. “Well?” he prods. “Tingle or no?”

“No,” Peter says. He frowns. “Well…maybe. I don’t know. It’s not like usual. It’s not danger, definitely. More like a nudge, I guess? Like a ‘not over here’ kind of thing. It’s stronger in some places than others.”

“A nudge,” Tony echoes, thinking. “Coming from this side of the kitchen?”

“Right now, yeah.”

“Hmm,” Tony says, turning his back to the kid and opening the cupboard by his head. He peers in, rearranges a few things, then moves on to the next cupboard along.

“What’re you doing?” Peter asks. He shifts around the island—closer, but not too close, Tony notes. 

“Trying to figure out whatever it is that’s setting you off. This is supposed to be a fun weekend. I want you to feel comfortable here. Mi casa, tu casa and all that.” Tony holds out a champagne flute in Peter’s direction. “You don’t have a sudden aversion to glassware that I don’t know about, do you?”

Peter bats the flute away with an eye roll. “Yeah, yeah, deathly afraid of glasses, that’s me. Seriously, Mr Stark, it’s fine. It’s probably nothing—sometimes it’s just like this.”

“If it’s nothing then get your ass over here,” Tony says, placing the flute back on its shelf. He looks over his shoulder at Peter, who grimaces and doesn’t move. “That’s what I thought.”

He opens the drawer by his hip. Rifles through the cutlery, then moves onto the next drawer down, the one affectionately dubbed ‘the crap drawer’. There’s pens and envelopes and tape and one of those little Disney plushies Morgan has started collecting and leaving all over the house, but nothing that sparks any reaction out of the kid when Tony holds them out towards him. 

“Mr Stark,” Peter says after ten minutes of this, when Tony has near-enough upended the kitchen. “There’s nothing here. Really, it’s fine, I’ll just take the long way round. It’s not a big deal. Can we go watch the movie, now?”

“You might not have noticed this, Pete, but when something gets in my head, I have to follow it to the end. Gotta figure it out. The last thing was time travel, so I’m pretty confident I can solve this one, too.”

Peter groans, dropping his head into his arms, folded over each other on the countertop. 

“Are you still feeling it?” Tony asks the top of his head. 

“No,” comes the muffled reply. 

“Pete.”

Peter looks up. “Mr Stark, come on,” he whines.

“So yes, then.”

Tony is running out of ideas—he’s been through all the drawers and cupboards, the cleaning supplies under the sink, which occurred to him as a likely culprit. But alas, nothing.

Nothing, that is, until he moves the flowerpot on the window sill and Peter cringes back, pressing himself into the edge of the island. 

“What is _that?_ ”

Tony frowns, looks at the pot in his hand. “The ficus?” he asks, feeling oddly insulted on behalf of the little plant he’s managed to keep alive for a running streak of three months now—and without Pepper’s help, he might add. The thought of having to throw the little guy out hits him harder than he thought it would, but if it’s the reason Peter’s feeling squirmy, he will. 

“No, _that._ ”

Peter isn’t looking at the plant, Tony realises, he’s looking at what sits behind it, tucked into the corner of the ledge where the window meets the wall. 

Tony reaches out and picks it up. He turns the smooth weight of it over in his palm. “This? It’s a conker.” He shakes his head. “Uh, chestnut, I mean. You never seen one before? There are trees all over round here.”

“A chestnut?” Peter asks, voice all weird. 

“Yeah. Pep and Morgan went to collect some after the pods started to fall last week. Dotted them around the house to—“ He stops. “Oh.”

He looks up at Peter, who’s staring at the seed in his hand with an odd expression on his face—one that looks to be cycling between deep discomfort and deep confusion about the basis of said discomfort. 

“This?” Tony asks, extending his hand toward Peter slightly, just to be sure. “Really?” 

The way the kid quickly backs up tells all. 

“What the hell?” Peter says, letting out an awkward laugh. He rubs at his arms. Tony can see all the hairs standing up there—like with goosebumps, but not. “What the… why is it doing that to me?”

For a moment, Tony can’t speak. It’s so ridiculous, but all the evidence is right there. Has been all day he sees, now he runs through earlier events with this new knowledge. 

“It’s an old wives’ tale,” he tells Peter, slowly. “You put them round the house—corners and window ledges and doorways and stuff, and it’s supposed to...well. It’s supposed to repel spiders. Stop them coming in.”

Peter looks at him like he’s grown a second head. He scoffs. “You’re messing with me.”

“I’m not. My aunt Peggy used to do it every fall. Swore by it.”

Peter holds Tony’s gaze for a moment—long enough for him to realise he really isn’t messing with him—and then, another incredulous laugh. “But...I’m not _actually_ a spider, though.”

Tony raises his brows. “You can stick to walls and _this_ is the spidery thing you take issue with? It’s a bit out there, sure, but hardly any more so than anything else.”

“Well, yeah. But sticking to walls is cool,” Peter says, wrinkling his nose. “This is… it’s lame. Like shitty kryptonite.”

“I think you’ll live,” Tony comments dryly. “Besides, shitty kryptonite is better than growing four extra limbs, or pincers, or any of the other things you could have ended up with.”

Tony tries to envision that, Peter with six arms and pincers. Weird. He shakes that image out of his brain.

“Why is it even in here?” Peter asks. “You’re not scared of spiders.” His eyes widen gleefully. “Wait, _are_ you scared of spiders?”

“Asks the guy scared of a nut.”

“I’m not _scared_ of it. I just don’t want to be anywhere near it,” Peter says. “So. Are you?”

Tony throws him a look. “ _No_. That would be the ladies of the house.”

“ _Pepper_ is scared of spiders.”

“Very. Don’t tell her I told you. That’s _her_ kryptonite.”

Peter looks endlessly amused by that, but then he frowns. “Wait. Morgan’s not,” he says. “I know she isn’t.” Tony guesses he’s remembering all the times she’s proudly announced rescuing one of the eight-legged from her tent or the sink because she ‘doesn’t want to hurt one of Spider-man’s friends’.

“Correction: Morgan _wasn’t_ scared of spiders. But she went to show Pepper the one she caught in the bathroom a couple of weeks ago, accidentally dropped it, Pepper started screaming, it was a whole thing. Anyway, now we’re having a phase. Hence these.”

He tosses the chestnut up in the air, noting Peter’s eyes following its path warily. Up, then down, back into his palm. “You know, they used to play games with these on the other side of the pond. Attach them to string and just bash them against each other til someone’s broke.” It’s been a long time since he’s thought about that. “ _Conkers_. Peggy and Jarvis tried to show me a couple of times but they were always much better at it than I was. More savage, too. All that English propriety straight out the window when it came to this, I’m telling you.”

He looks up. Peter is no longer watching the conker, he’s looking at him. His expression has gone soft. “That’s nice,” he says, quietly, a small smile lifting at the corner of his mouth. 

Tony clears his throat. Looks away. “Yeah. Well. They were nice people.” He puts the conker down on the counter. “I’ve got a slightly different game in mind for today, though.”

Peter tilts his head.

“Can’t leave these things around the house, now, can we? How do you feel about using that built-in radar for an Easter egg hunt?”

Peter’s grin says he would feel very good about that, indeed.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Also big thanks to frostysunflowers for putting the idea of Peggy and Jarvis getting competitive over conkers in my brain, and everyone who helped me figure out what the hell conkers are called over in the US!
> 
> I have it on good authority from the one sitting on my own window ledge that this does work, at least with the big boys, but I feel like I’m going to regret being so confident one of these days!
> 
> Please let me know if you liked 😊 your comments feed me!


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